morning thoughts

After Obama and his team ran a campaign that made Swiss Clockwork look like a '78 Pinto and made the U.S. Marine Corps. look like a bunch of undisciplined hooligans, everybody expected pretty much the same from the transition. And then came Richardson and his pay to play. HRC and Bubba's international influence-peddling. Holder's involvement with the ridiculous pardons of Marc Rich and FALN. And the icing on the cake: Treasury Secretary-designee Tim Geithner's missing back-taxes, which is about as perfect a metaphor for Wall Street as I can imagine. My coworker commented that his vetting process must be seriously FUBAR, and I agreed.

But then I thought this morning as I was dodging the conspicuously armed cops and bomb-sniffing dogs on the metro (the next five days are going to be amazing here in the nation's capitol) that there's no way they could consistently screw up like this; that they could hit every note during the campaign and then fumble the political ball so badly once they won the election. With all the talk of Obama creating a pragmatic, competent, effective administration, maybe they didn't mess up - maybe they just don't care about the political game. Who cares about the Marc Rich pardon - maybe Holder is the best person for Attorney General, politics be damned.

At least that's what I'm praying: that his selections are pragmatic and post- (or maybe supra-) partisan, more about governing well than scoring political points. Because if they aren't, and his fuck-ups really are fuck-ups, then I'm afraid we're stuck with another president whose brilliant campaigning won't lead to brilliant governing.

Good Chardonnay tastes like buttermilk and charcoal.

If you taste fruit, you've been fucking had.

(a theme song)

I have found it.

PETA leadership probably aren't the absolute craziest people alive, but their ratio of Money/Respectability to Insanity is unmatched.

They also have the highest ratio of lying to self-righteousness of anyone outside the Discovery Institute. Probably comes from having the same mission: convince people of something you do not yourself believe.

~

On the road just north of IU, I took some time for cofabg's Best Blogger Alive. Who you'll notice, agrees with my take on the Palin run.

It's worth re-stating from the heart of Red America: there's a sizable minority of voters who are being asked, a third time, to vote on tribal identity. In 2000 it was For Christ, in 2004 Against Queers and 2008 it's For One of Our Own.

Honestly folks, Aaron Sorkin, Paul Begala and the rest need not apply for this election. It's going to follow its own strange logic. The last decade has whittled our battle down from Liberal vs. Conservative to People of Ability vs. The People Next Door. The Republicans have broken as a governing party, and have no other logic left.

It's an insane sell, given how difficult next year's going to be.

I still think it could work.

~

I like McCain's new Vice President in Waiting a lot. I'd love to go drinking or snomobiling with her. She seems tough, accomplished, and geeky as hell. She actually lives the Western Republican life (the one Bush fakes so shamelessly). She's a hockey fan, and has possibly killed a bear.

Palin's also a baffling pick for the White House, because she's younger than Obama and has done only very local politics.

But Warthog, none of that matters.

Sarah Palin matters, and may decide this election, because she's a white fertile Church Lady. The perfect fetish object for cable news, which makes its fortune selling reassuring social balm to the Politics Casual crowd in outer suburbia. Whose primary voting influence is ... cable news.

Hell, compared to this, bringing the fetus warriors back to the polls is a small bonus. She'll be written on by those people too. Held up as an example not of leadership or independence, but of stagnant Marianism. A fantasy of resistance to icky things like modern medicine, poverty and free will. The infantcy cult that makes up white religion is always looking for examples.

And Barack Obama is black.

I'm sorry. He's "Arabish." Or ... Indoarbanmuslimese. He's frighteningly foreign in ways that have absolutely nothing to do with the taboo bigorty that no respectable person feels because he is American and also black.

And hiding behind a white woman isn't at all a way to live your fears while looking progressive at the same time.

Who Palin is and what she can be made to embody exist at the crossroads of a TON of this year's social pressures. And those influences are all aimed square at middle-high income whites who are, by any name, the swing voters in crucial states.

She can relieve these people's complex anxieties. She can be their life-by-proxy. And not for any reason nobler than that, Sarah Palin can be a game changer this fall.

Here's hoping I'm wrong.

9:05AM

Bizzo: Do inflatable dolls dream of rubber sheep?
Dutch: I think they dream about consensual sex.
Bizzo: ... on point.

10:30AM

Bizzo: Dammit!
Hundsfrau: is your gchat not working
Bizzo: It's posessed by the devil.
Screaming at me in dead languages I can hear without sound, beckoning me to the pits of Shub-Niggurath to be fellated to death by the whirling-toothed overwhores of Baal.
... so yeah. Not working.

It's days like this I really miss the Brown Door. Do you have a lot of conversations? I do, and most of them suck. Even with friends, most conversation in your 20's is pointless stuff-referencing, picture-posing-for and here's-my-card life updates. Look at those Facebook pictures folks. It's why we're drinking and turning the music up. Not much interesting is being said.

It's actually worse for nerds. People who read a lot and privately think they're clever make the shittiest small talk. Because no one's as smart as they think they need to be. Better to make jokes about Gawker than to reveal a wrong opinion.

It's a rare find, more than one person with whom you have real fun, just talking.

Which is a long way of saying a plane, is going, to crash, in Brazil.

You know what's scary? All that Darwin stuff DOES anger God, because it makes a god of ... nature? ... Rationality? No.

OF MY BELLY! And my silky-soft tongue.

All will be zesty, and despair.

I eat far less Ice Cream than I should

When I was younger I helped to "coach" a team called the "Tyson's Corner Redskins"

It does wonders for your self esteem when people would rather stand than sit next to you on the metro

If things go as planned, I'll be spending at least part of the '09 or '10 summer riding around on a Greyhound watching Minor League games.

I'm beginning to turn the corner on Starbucks.

I've given great thought to greeting people by saying "Go Mojo."

I hate personalized license plates to no end.

I sometimes pull punches on what I write here. I'll probably stop that once I realize that the same 15 or so people that I talk to on a weekly basis are the only people who read Confessions